


Aqua Vitae

by NEMKA



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22514710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NEMKA/pseuds/NEMKA
Summary: Sirius Black is a match.All his life - a swamp.





	1. i. fog

Home is a continuous sequence of sounds. Jim pokes around in the attic - metal parts rattle, Mrs. Potter's slippers rub on the parquet and rings, clinking on a saucer, a ceramic filigree.

  
Family nest - a rotten dampness. As much as Sirius does try, everything drowns, becomes lost in the ringing silence. The walls absorb life and light, like a huge gray sponge. This house, he thinks, can’t be saves by anything, like wet wood will not catch fire from the matches thrown at it.

  
Sirius Black is a match.

  
All his life - a swamp.

  
He, of course, tries to scream there, underwater, but as a result almost chokes. So helplessly lurk in the puddles only cockroaches.

  
And as he sinks, falls and fades away, it feels like an eternity.


	2. ii. heavy rain

Severus Snape's slightly pale face shines in the darkness of the headmaster's office. He smiles mischievously, triumphantly, and it seems to Remus that he almost sees the dark mark on his wrist.

“We live in the dark times, Mr. Lupin."

Thin lips twitch, silently repeating the words spoken by the old men, as if smiling. Who's getting whose pants down now?

"A pity," Dumbledore says, adjusting his glasses. After a recent full moon, the shoulder wounds hurt, and the fake sympathy does nothing to help. "Pity. But I can't offer you a job. A lemon drop?

Stomach convulses with hunger.

"No thank you. I'd better go."

The door to the office slams shut, and Remus slips up on a puddle from his own umbrella.


	3. iii. stardust

Harry grunts all the way to the attic. How not to complain, when Sirius woke him up at two o'clock in the morning, ordered him to dress up and now was pulling him somewhere along the dusty and cold corridors.

  
"Look, this is the Canis Major constellation," his godfather points to a cluster of bright spots in the night sky. The boy blinks blindly, and listens only halfway through his ears. He tries not to look down - his head is terribly dizzy on the roof and so he moves closer to Sirius. “And there's Orion's belt, and on his shoulder is Bellatrix. According to legend...

  
"I found you! Merlin, Sirius, so many stars, like... like sand!"

  
Black throws back his head and laughs hoarsely. His voice is heavy with melancholy and causeless sadness, but to Harry it suddenly seems like it's the happiest moment of his life.

  
"You see, there are many stars, and I am the one and only."

  
They sit for a long, long time. Sirius finds an old atlas somewhere and talks about what is not yet visible.

"Come in the summer, I'll show you the other half of the sky.

  
"If we live," Harry says wearily.

  
It starts to rain, but to him it seems like stardust falling from the sky.


	4. iv. blizzard

“None of you understand!” Harry bangs his hands on the counter-top and looks first at Sirius, then at Dumbledore. “You will never understand, but you still don't let me to attend these damned meetings!”

“Well, yes, Harry, you're right,” the black-haired author of about forty, who has been sitting next to Moody at dinner, pushes away an empty plate and stares at the boy heavily. He thinks he sees the yellowish reflections of yesterday's full moon in her eyes. "Nobody knows how it is, not to be yourself in your own body. I don't. Neither, I bet, does Remus.

"What about me, huh?" Ginny sways on a rickety chair, one leg pressed under her. The number of people remaining at the table is noticeably lessening. "It’s hard for you, so what? It’s easier for us, or what, huh?

Outside the window last year's snow creaks under a pair of dragonhide boots.


	5. v. ripples

“We all have a price, Lupin. We all." Andromeda crushes a beetle with a heel of her shoe and, disgusted, casts a cleansing spell. "The price is different."

“With all due respect, Mrs. Tonks. You are a cynic. People are not the same." Remus looks determined and a little wounded.

She mutters something about teenage mindset and smiles knowingly. Her blue eyes, that the misty depths, are thirty feet of pure water and devils in piles until the very bottom.

“Would you kill me for Tonks and Teddy?” And what about Moody? Joined the Death Eaters? Would you sell your conscience?"

“I would die for them.”

“Technically, you would sell your life.” Andromeda takes a thin book from her pocket and goes to read in the shade.

Remus is stubbornly silent as he watches Teddy throwing stones at a drying mud puddle.


End file.
